Saturday 17 January 2009 19.01 EST
First published on Saturday 17 January 2009 19.01 EST

All week, the phone-in fulminators called Manchester City's £100m bid for Kaká "obscene in the current economic climate", as if it would have passed the morality test back in the boom days when it was raining jobs and mortgages.

Football has yet to vacate life's Bollinger tent. Nor will it, when whole countries are engaged in branding exercises: the original purpose of Abu Dhabi's takeover of Manchester City, as the purchasers freely admitted. Buying Kaká was a mailshot scheme devised by a sheikh who is buying a side by remote control and sees no discrepancy in plonking Brazil's best player in the same squad as Danny Mills.

Ethical misgivings can wear the No12 and come on if we need them. There are more immediate, football-related anomalies in City bidding £100m for a playmaker while also sizing up Scott Parker, a revitalised journeyman, but a journeyman none the less if we're talking Champions League calibre.

Not forgetting his West Ham colleague, Craig Bellamy, whose limitations were exposed in his short time at Liverpool. What we see is Mark Hughes, the City manager, attempting to construct a side capable of rising from 15th position to berths five-to-eight. Simultaneously, Sheikh Mansour is thrusting a hand into the firmament to pull down a star who could have no possible motivation to relocate to City beyond the lure of Mammon.

The gods are playing weird games with that patch of Manchester. Tony Blair wanted to see a super-casino built there so the locals could acquire low-paid jobs that sent them home to their families at 3am. Those not lucky enough to become croupiers or table-clearers were welcome to take out membership and acquire gambling addictions instead.

This is how New Labour sought to help the local poor, until Gordon Brown's antipathy to industrialised betting kicked in. Now, we see a Middle-Eastern oil state buying a place on the entertainment map and turning the City of Manchester Stadium into a kind of Hollywood Studio capable of combining the earnest scufflings of Parker with the graceful orchestrations of Kaká.

When Robinho joined City for £32m it was said by some that Hughes's team would suddenly materialise in the Premier League's top four. Presently they are four points above the relegation zone and have been knocked out of the League and FA Cups by Brighton and Nottingham Forest respectively.

Watch a tape of that capitulation at home to Brian Clough's old club and you might race to the conclusion that the £100m wafted under Silvio Berlusconi's nose may be better spent on a defence. Wayne Bridge, at left-back, was a good start.

Instinct says trophy-winning sides are simply not built this way, from the top down. With his "I Belong to Jesus" T-shirt, Kaká has already given himself away once, but the clearest sign that he had doubts about doing so a second time was the report that he would demand a get-out clause in case City had not qualified for the Champions League at the end of the 2009-10 season.

Is this a good starting point for love? The obsession with snatching someone (anyone) off Fifa's World Player of the Year shortlist obscures the reality that one of City's major failings has been that of attitude and application, which no showbiz signing could correct. At Chelsea the first wave of Roman Abramovich's wealth lent the Claudio Ranieri and José Mourinho sides a demonic intensity. At City it has had the opposite effect, perhaps because many of Hughes's players assume they will be tossed aside when the sheikh next switches on his plasma and spots a household name in Serie A he likes.

Most amusing of all is Kaká's idea of seeking an audience with Sheikh M to measure his intentions, as if the owner's lack of knowledge and his plan, were not already abundantly clear.

The academy director fielded a request from Hughes this week to "send more" members of the club's FA Youth Cup-winning side to work with the first-team squad. Note the timing. The colts prevailed at Portsmouth to reach the fifth-round of a competition they won last year under the excellent stewardship of Jim Cassell.

A tiny fantasy now dances through the mind of Sheikh Mansour sliding into a seat at Fratton Park to watch "the kids" win again. He's there with his steaming cup of amorphous brown fluid to observe the school that brought us Stephen Ireland, Micah Richards, Daniel Sturridge and Michael Johnson.

But the sheikh was not there. He was in oil country waiting to hear whether Kaká's father and chief adviser would tell his son to take a reckless punt on City for a reported half a million pounds a week, when he earns a king's wage already at Milan.

Borthwick must find the Johnson within

As England's most distinguished captain since Bobby Moore, Martin Johnson can be trusted to understand leadership, but there's no disguising that Steve Borthwick retains the office for this year's Six Nations Championship by default.

The strong silent lock with divot-pocked features is an archetype Johnson is bound to like as he endeavours to bury the memory of the three southern-hemisphere canings his team took in the autumn.

A great player is judged by his actions; a manager stands or falls by his appointments. Already Johnson's loyalty to John Wells (forwards coach), Mike Ford (defence) and now Borthwick will shape our verdicts from the instant England kick off against Italy on 7 February.

Borthwick is stoical and willing, but a skittish England side need more in the way of tactical direction. Experts say talent-identification has been England's main failing since the World Cup triumph of 2003. The likelihood that the 28-year-old ex-Kiwi Riki Flutey will keep his place at centre puts the bullet in that gun.

The more charitable observers say this is a young England side who are evolving. But there are only three players under the age of 25 in the most likely starting XV. Borthwick himself has 43 caps. Time for him to impose his will.

Five reasons why Ryder Cup captains should have a code of conduct

1 Nick Faldo, five times. The proposed new rules could be characterised as the anti-Faldo laws. The Cup still can't decide whether to be mortal combat in slacks or a ceremonial embrace of continents. Europe's leader last year fell right down that divide.

2 No offspring on the carts. Faldo rode round with his kids as if it were a Florida sunshine break. He turned the opening ceremony into a wedding speech, informing the world his daughters were progressing nicely in Hollywood and fashion.

3 In the same address he announced that Padraig Harrington had hit more practice shots than there were potatoes in Ireland and asked Graeme McDowell: "Are you from Ireland or Northern Ireland?"

4 After Europe's winning streak had been broken, Faldo soldiered on with the jokes: "See you in Wales [in 2010]. And bring your waterproofs with you." Ignoring protocols, he was tetchy and sarcastic in press conferences.

5 Captains have too much power to unleash controversy with his wildcard picks and choice of backroom staff. A player grumbled: "When we looked up from the greens, the Americans had Ray Floyd and Dave Stockton [ex-captains] and we had DJ Spoony."

Sports personality of the week

When Birmingham's Martin Taylor mangled Eduardo's leg in February last year, there was an unhealthy preoccupation with the perpetrator's anguish. The real victim was Arsenal's Croatia striker.

Eduardo struck a hat-trick for Arsenal reserves last week and will soon be back in the first XI. It was impressive that he should say of those gruesome moments when his leg was snapped: "I was thinking about how strong it was for kids to watch. That was a major concern for me, in terms of how it might affect them and their views about playing football."